Poetry Madlibs: April Isn’t the Cruelest Month

The following exercise comes to you courtesy of Rob Carney, an astounding poet and a professor at Utah Valley University. When Carney’s class was recommended to me, it came with one of the strangest testimonials I’ve heard. To paraphrase, my friend told me that when they took the course, they didn’t feel like they were learning at all. Rather — thanks to the exercises and assignments given in class — they were simply playing with language throughout the semester. It was only after the semester concluded that they realized how much this form of play had improved their effectiveness with the craft.

So, without further introduction, I bring you an exercise from that course (posted here with permission of the original author).

APRIL MAD LIBS

(Have enough fun that you can’t wait to share the resulting draft.)

1.Begin with “April isn’t the cruelest month. That would be [pick one of the other 11],

2. then continue after the comma by saying “when [specific object/thing doing/being some specific action] and [choose another, but it has to be unlike the first one].

3. Now keep going on the opening thought/elaborate: “In April, [a series of three things that make the reader conclude “joy,” “happiness,” “sex appeal,” “contentment,” “adventure,” or etc., but you can’t use those words. The feelings have to be evoked, the moods enacted. For ex., if I write “On bright blue days, I flap my wings,” I bet twenty bucks you can name that emotion. So, three evocations, please.]

4. Introduce a contrast/redirect via direct address: “Maybe if you’d written a letter to [insert someone literary, or at least someone specific and individual], then [he (or she or they)] could have explained, could have said, [Insert some explanatory or other type of quote: no more than 30 words in that person’s voice, so make them count; make them vivid, or scolding, or curious, or flirty, or wise, or etc.]

5. But wait!—you get more than 30 words after all since you will now tack on a ‘P.S.: [something that sounds like an old saying/adage/bit of folk wisdom, but it must be entirely new, probably strange, and invented by you.]‘

6. Backtrack now to the opening idea: “No, it’s [month] that’s cruel because [something having to do with animals, or children, or difficult directions to ? and getting lost].

7. Either skip to #8, or add anything you want here. Maybe you should be declarative, or philosophical, or say something about a month you’d like to stay in bed late with, or . . . how should I know? Surprise yourself, your poem, your listeners.

8. By the end, you have to be evoking something underwater, or talking about space, or detailing/enacting what happens when you open a window.

9. If you feel you need a final line, something else in the way of closure, do it, especially if your final lines(s) recall(s) an earlier phrase or image while also changing something about it.

I’m eager to see where this exercise leads you! Share your results in the comments.

And before we depart, a little more about the author:

Rob Carney’s fourth book, 88 Maps, was published by Lost Horse Press (distribution by University of Washington Press). Previous books and chapbooks include Story Problems and Weather Report, both from Somondoco Press.

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Okay, I wasn’t planning on this, but posting this here got me excited enough that I wanted to do this exercise again. Here goes.

Dear High School Poets

April isn’t the cruelest month. That would be January
when bleak winds shear the skin off you and
the fresh year suffocates you like three-foot snowfall.

In April, Orion is just where he’s supposed to be in the sky,
fresh salads sing campfire songs in my stomach,
and the blue shades remember why they shine.

Maybe if you’d written a letter to Van Gogh,
he could have explained, could have said,
“Between the blooming and the dying you’ll find
all the color. And the dying part’s empty is easy It’s
the blooming that’s so hard.

No, it’s January that’s cruel because the cottontails merge into snow heaps
and the children’s cheeks flush red like active battlefields of rebellion to the cold.
December’s hearth-heat has faded and February’s imaginings
of March are too far off to crystallize.

There is nothing here but an eternal gazing out the window,
watching the air’s ice crystals halo around the street lamps,
waiting, waiting,
and unwilling to step out into skin-shear wind and new-year strangling
with its seasons still to be endured.